Confederacy = Racism

There's no two ways about it. The War Between the States was called The War of Northern Aggression by some Southerners because they didn't want to give up their enslavement of African peoples. The Southern system of plantations and cotton growing was built around the ownership of human beings, making their labor wage-less, essentially free, depending how low you could keep their standards of living. By the time of the Civil War it was illegal even to educate a slave. America was and continues to be an imperfect Union constantly striving to be "more perfect" but with the exception of the genocide against the Native American population that roamed free in this country before the European settlers took over, there is no other abomination so widespread, so much of an infrastructure, as the institution of slavery. And no matter what other issues may have existed, that is the one that could not be brokered.

Cue Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, supposedly some sort of new-style Republican who might even be Presidential timber. Aside from his ridiculous counter to President Obama's State of the Union Address this year, held in the Virginia legislative chambers as if to give him the heft of the Presidency, where he simply recycled previously failed GOP talking points (W. II?), he has made perhaps the gaffe of the year, all the more flagrant for having actually been planned.

McDonnell decided to declare April "Confederate History Month," which is something like proclaiming "National Socialism History Month" in present-day Germany. And just in case we don't know where McDonnell and the Virginia GOP's sympathies lie, he somehow neglected to mention slavery in his proclamation statement.

Cue the hasty late addition of a clause after hue and cry, notably from McDonnell's top African-American supporter, the wealthy Sheila Johnson, Co-Founder of Black Entertainment Television:

"I must condemn Governor McDonnell's Proclamation honoring 'Confederate History Month,' and its insensitive disregard of Virginia's complicated and painful history, the remnants of which many Virginians still wrestle with today,'' Johnson wrote in a statement. "The complete omission of slavery from an official government document, which purports to be a call for Virginians to 'understand' and 'study' their history, is both academically flawed and personally offensive. If Virginians are to celebrate their 'shared history,' as this proclamation suggests, then the whole truth of this history must be recognized and not evaded."

Johnson, a Democrat, was one of McDonnell's biggest supporters last year on the campaign trail. She even came to his defense when some questioned his commitment to women's rights after the publication of his 1989 graduation school thesis in which he wrote that working women were a detriment to a society. She argued as a working woman that she trusted McDonnell to be helpful in boosting the economy.

I'm guessing it will be tough for Bob to get Ms. Johnson's support for any future political office. His statement (that comes with the addendum to the declaration):

"The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed," McDonnell wrote in a statement. "The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation."

He also added a clause to the proclamation that declares slavery "led to this war."

It turns out that McDonnell's been just as insensitive on this issue in the past. Per Virginia's Not Larry Sabato:

After the 2001 election where Republicans took 66 of 100 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, then-Delegate Bob McDonnell had a motion on the opening day of the 2002 session. He wanted the House of Delegates to begin reciting a "salute to the flag of the Commonwealth of Virginia". The words to the Salute had been passed in 1954 and didn't raise a red flag on their own:

"I salute the flag of Virginia, with reverence and patriotic devotion to the "Mother of States and Statesmen" which it represents - the "Old Dominion," where liberty and independence were born."

A few days into 2002 session the Richmond Times-Dispatch broke a story of where this pledge came from. It was from the United Daughters of the Confederacy- who had been using it at every official gathering since 1946!

Immediately all hell broke loose in the General Assembly. McDonnell played coy- pretending he didn't know where the pledge (that he had asked the House of Delegates to recite each day) came from:

Delegate Robert F. McDonnell (R-Virginia Beach), who suggested that the salute be revived, claimed ignorance of its origins but told the Times-Dispatch last week he hoped they would not detract from the sentiments it expresses. "The words are good," he said. "I don't think we should malign that great salute based on any links to the Confederacy, and I hope people will understand this."

The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus then asked that the House stop with this UDC pledge. McDonnell led the fight on the floor to keep it. The motion to do away with the pledge failed on a 50-48 vote. Having ignored the pain he was causing- McDonnell continued to lead the House in the pledge for another two years until after the 2003 elections. For those two years, members of the Black Caucus refused to participate in this "pledge".

So is Bob clueless or a Confederacy sympathizer? Ah, for the good old days, Bob. It again brings to mind this past Presidential electoral map, and it's similarity to the map of the slave/non-slave states, albeit with Virginia and North Carolina in the right in 2008.

And it looks like his apology/addendum is not sitting well with his constituency, again per TPM:

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Brandon Dorsey, of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, called McDonnell's move "an insult," and charged that the governor had undermined the purpose of the resolution," and damaged himself with his core supporters. But another member of the group disagreed, saying he supported the apology "one hundred percent."

...

Contacted this afternoon by TPMmuckraker, Dorsey said he was unaware of McDonnell's apology. After it was read to him, Dorsey said the apology "comes as a shock," and accused the governor of "pandering to people who never would have voted for him nor supported any of his policies."

Making clear that he was speaking only for himself, Dorsey said that the apology "completely undermined the purpose of the resolution." He added: "We would probably have rather not had a proclamation whatsoever, than for him to add a clause that says that everything that we support and everything we hold dear has to do with slavery."

Hey, if you think McDonnell is bad, try his Attorney General.